the whole UFO thing was started as a counter-intelligence operation to obscure US R&D/defense stuff during the cold war and they lost control of it, meaning a non-negligible chunk of the conspiracism about the government in that movement is reading actual events through a heavily distorted lens

... that context differs in important ways from what's represented in the NT - this isn't to say that there's nothing to be gleaned historically from the NT (far from it) but rather that a fuller picture emerges from engagement across the wider scholarship that looks at that period and its culture

specialize in things like Second Temple Judaism, Jewish Sectarianism, the origins of the Rabbinic Literature and the like - I think more people studying early Christian literature should engage with that material and look at how the context that Christianity emerged in is reconstructed, and how...

Do, I think you'll find it very interesting, and the Schwartz's Judaism and Imperialism - one of the frustrating things studying a lot of this stuff for me has been how very different the assumptions about history are between at least some NT scholars and those who study the broader period, and...

I also recommend Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines: The Partition of Judeo-Christianity as a differing account, but one in which what he says about later Christian and Jewish literature can be extended to the early stuff - these issues are extremely complicated and need to be read carefully

... look it up). While the origins of Christianity are clearly within an apocalyptic, messianic Jewish sect by the time we get literature it has changed dramatically, and imo that literature is best read as an explanation of why the movement is the way it is rather than historical documentation

... differs so widely in both what it describes Jesus as saying and in chronology that if it has oral traditions behind it they're irreconcilable with the synoptics. Robyn Faith Walsh's The Origins of Early Christian Literature needs to be taken seriously here I think (if you're not familiar...

how do we know there were oral traditions behind the gospels? And, more importantly, while there probably were to some degree (at least behind Mark) how do we know they were accurate? It's entirely possible that Luke and Matthew just have Mark and are simply extrapolating on that text, and John...

I strongly believe this paper should be on the syllabus for every Biblical Studies programme, and early - the earlier people learn "there are some things we can't be sure of and we need to be ok with that" the better (as well as not to make the kinds of inconsistent arguments Sommer criticizes)

... their portrayal of a sectarian landscape that no longer exists, in a region they don't reside in?
(the analysis of that legal issue is in Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah: Five Studies by EP Sanders, if you want to look it up, its the issue of Corban)

... accuracy, when there is no grounds to think that the authors in question had any real knowledge of the actual activities of the Pharisees is entirely unwarranted. These texts were written outside of Judaea after the first revolt - what possible grounds is there for thinking they're accurate in..

I mean, attributing a legal position not attested anywhere other than Philo to the Pharisees seems indicative of general inaccuracy, doesn't it? At the very least it brings to question the assumption that many hold that the portrayal is accurate. But my primary point is that the assumption of...

That being the case, while one might be drawn to reflexively reject overcorrections which are also polemical, the polemical nature of the texts in question should automatically give one pause regarding both their polemical redeployment and the accuracy of how they present their oponents

a key component of both Jewish and Christian self-definition: the demonization of the other. Boyarin positions this as beginning in earnest in the Second Century but I think it's clear that the polemics start far earlier, and are present even in Paul (cf. like, all of Galatians, honestly).

the various sects including the Pharisees is just not true. We don't know enough to reconstruct things accurately, but we do have good basis to judge the NT presentation of the Pharisees as both inaccurate and prejudiced - and work out why that is the case, which is what Boyarin argues is....

arguing that it is a massive oversimplification to equate the Pharisees and the Rabbis (see Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines and Seth Schwartz's Imperialism and Jewish Society for good cases as to why) but the idea that other sources are just as biased and that we cannot reconstruct anything about...

simply accurate records of historical events, they're at best as partisan as any other sources we have, and must be read with the same hermenuetic of suspicion as other sources, and are more likely as partisan as the extremely polemical documents from the Qumran Yachad.
I am on the record as...

a legal position only attested in Philo of Alexandria is attributed to the Pharisees, demonstrating that they're unreliable. Further, they're clearly advocating for as sectarian position as any of the sects presented in the texts. There is no reason to assume that the early Christian texts are...

Judaea, where the Pharisees were operative, and more likely to have been written elsewhere in the Eastern Empire. They are at best reporting on things the authors heard about events in Judaea, and are definitely imaginatively reconstructing things. In one account of the disputes with the Pharisees..

How do we know that? Paul was, but we don't know who wrote the Gospels, they're anonymous texts written in Greek later attributed to figures important to the early Church. We don't know who wrote them, and that they're written in Greek makes them demographically unlikely to have been written in...

I can't go back there
Not back to the park
The brown monk ghost will catch us
And make us lust-rockers
Make us wear huckleberry masks

מה בשר לאלה
ומה יחשב עפר ואפר לספר אלה מקץ לקץ
ולהתיצב במעמד לפניכה לבוא ביחד עם בני שמים
ואין מליץ להשיב דבר כפיכה

that would impute the speaker as kind of an idiot) when, within the context in which they're speaking, they're almost certainly not - but that often requires knowing a bit more about said context

... he's talking theology. This (hopefully obviously) isn't to say that the Pope is unimpeachable in his statements (I am, after all, not Catholic) but rather to say that it's best not to read religious statements as dealing with what some would call the "merely empirical" (particularly when...

are always looking for - not many institutions want to just fold, much less ones with lots of power. That may not be a good thing, but I also don't think it's either ignorance or denialism - and, more importantly, Vance isn't making a point about history either - as he explicitly says....

this diremption of the actual and the potential can be a way to weasel out of historical accounting but also, in its own way, can emphasize the humanity of institutional power, and thus its fallibility without undermining the ability of those institutions to function, which is what institutions...

... criticism of historical wrongs, but also, in a manner, of acknowledging they happened while also emphasizing that the good that is the goal of morality remains unachieved even in institutions dedicated to the pursuit of such good.

... asked about the Crusades and the like he would give a response using a framework similar to Augustine's Two Cities, making a distinction between the mundane and the spiritual. This might appear to be a cop-out (and is a serious problem) but it serves not only a function of deflecting...

he is speaking about the Church, from his position as head of the Church, which, in somewhat archaic parlance, is a spiritual not temporal institution. I expect that this is intentional, because I don't think you get to be Pope without understanding such things, and I would assume that if...

the operative words in the dispute are "theology" and "'the Church". I'm not an expert, and I'm also not party to this, but firstly, Vance recognizes that when the Pope speaks as he did, he's doing theology, which is distinct from history. Likewise, in the Pope's statement...